Caetano Veloso

Throughout a career spanning 40 years and countless experiments, Brazilian singer and songwriter Caetano Veloso has been tagged with every conceivable comparison to English-language pop and rock royalty. One year he's the "Brazilian John Lennon," a rebel who shakes up the staid bossa nova. The next he's the "Brazilian Bob Dylan" for his poetic, sharply observed lyrics. He's been mentioned alongside Miles Davis (for his restlessness) and Paul McCartney (for his earnestness) and David Byrne (for his determined artiness).

While most of these comparisons are apt, none fully captures the range of Veloso's talent -- he's a sublime and seductive melodist, a curious musician capable of sharp left turns, a historian whose compositions tie past and present together in a way no other pop-music figure has managed, at once upholding tradition and transcending it. And the Bahia native makes everything he does, from a rudimentary Carnaval samba to his more pensive recent pastels, sound as effortless as wind whistling through the trees.

Veloso gets his start in the late '60s, at the moment the Musica Popular Brazil, or MPB, begins to open up to Western rock influences. He and Gilberto Gil start with regional rhythms, then add electric guitars and thick studio production -- elements alien to Brazilian pop at the time. The music, called "tropicália" after Veloso's anthemic song, became a political light-ning rod, and Veloso and Gil were forced into exile in 1971, after issuing only several albums -- his 1968 breakthrough, recorded with Brazilian rockers Os Mutantes, and the following year's gorgeously orchestrated "white" album, are among the most rewarding.

Veloso continues to experiment with rock and jazz-fusion touches -- one record he made in exile, 1972's Transa, transforms typically Brazilian chanted choruses via glossy and occasionally psychedelic production. Veloso doesn't stay in that zone for long, however: His 1975 gem, Qualquer Coisa, is built around meditative acoustic guitar in the style of the legendary João Gilberto, an album-length spell marred only by three Beatles covers sung in halting English. Veloso continues to record and tour through the late '70s, and becomes an important cultural figure in Brazil -- he writes poetry, paints, and collaborates with Gil and other figures associated with bossa nova and MPB.

His recordings begin to get worldwide attention in the mid-'80s: His eponymous first effort for Nonesuch is another acoustic marvel, and this time the covers ("Eleanor Rigby," Michael Jackson's "Billie Jean") are handled with Veloso's customary elegance. Next comes the Arto Lindsay–produced Estrangeiro, which expands his U.S. profile even though, in hindsight, it sounds cluttered and unnecessarily conceptual. Veloso and Gil reunite to mark the 25th anniversary of tropicalia with Tropicalia 2, an incredibly spirited, gloriously rhythmic document that argues the duo's movement was more than a fad. From there, Veloso pays tribute to Latin American composers including Ernesto Lecuona and Astor Piazzolla with the erratic Fina Estampa, and then begins developing a more orchestral approach to pop that blossoms on 1998's Livro, a brilliantly moody song cycle flecked with Gil Evans orchestrations and hip-hop rhythms. This is, arguably, his masterpiece.

Veloso has a habit of following studio works with live recordings from the subsequent tours. Among the best of these are Circulado Vivo, from his 1993 trip, and Live in Bahia, an emotional homecoming show from 2002. Among his many collaborations with other artists, the 2002 set with Jorge Mautner, Eu Não Peço Desculpa, is notable for its lighthearted, whimsical embrace of electronica -- further proof that though he could easily retire on his catalogue, Veloso is one of those rare souls for whom music is not a job, but a kind of quest. Veloso's valentine to classic English–language pop songcraft, A Foreign Sound, is a work of sly daring: In between conjuring spare, deliciously moody treatments of torch songs like "Smoke Gets in Your Eyes," Veloso offers illuminated updates of Nirvana's "Come As You Are" and Stevie Wonder's "If It's Magic" and even rehabilitates that '70's treacle pit, "Feelings." (TOM MOON)

From 2004's The New Rolling Stone Album Guide